ProjectProposal-GregNagel
From CS 160 Fall 2008
Accessibility concerns are only rarely addressed in the game industry. Research into audio game techniques will help to increase awareness and popularize the practice so that more mainstream games are created with the blind community in mind. The main task is to create a sound-based game with an interface that is easy to learn and use.
Accessibility, in our context, refers to the ability of players to communicate with the game, namely how the player interacts with input and output devices. These devices can be divided in terms of the five human senses. Of these, scent and taste have not been emulated in any relevant way and humans have little direct control over their production. Other sensors can be produced, such as temperature gauges, but they have seen little use in games. What is left is visual stimuli, auditory stimuli and tactile stimuli. Computers lack the processing power to meaningfully utilize visual input, though the monitor provides the most meaningful output in a game. Sound input is rarely used, only to the extent of tone or word recognition, though audio is often used to reinforce or enhance video output. Tactile devices, such as buttons, joysticks, mice and switches are the most important source of input, though feedback is mainly limited to simple vibration. In terms of devices, we are left with visual display, sound output, vibration, tone detection, word recognition and tactile input.
The problems people experience in terms of accessibility relate to vision, hearing, speech, mobility and cognition. Hearing and speech problems do not prevent access from many games. Most spoken dialog is duplicated in text and auditory input is scarce. There are a few sound-based games, like Guitar Hero, or puzzles where auditory clues are not sufficiently duplicated, but this happens a relatively small amount of the time. Mobility difficulties vary from those who have a broken finger to paralyzed individuals who communicate through use of a switch device. Catering to these individuals has yielded a wide number of solutions, but there is more work to be done. Cognitive difficulties are some of the most difficult to address. Those with memory problems may need constant reminders to complete an objective. Those with some reasoning impairments require the entire game catered to their needs.
However, I believe visual impairments are the most feasible to address in the domain of game accessibility. These impairments range from varying degrees of color-blindedness to no sight at all. A person with complete blindness must use auditory cues to navigate the entire game, yet visual cues are rarely duplicated with sound effects. Sound is underutilized in games as a whole.
Here's a quote from a blind gamer which illustrates his commitment to gaming in face of difficulties:
Hello. I am Luke Hewitt, resident in England and I'm 23 (and about to start a PhD in philosophy). I was born registered blind, and use Braille, but have an extremely limited amount of vision, and have always played computer games.
While I was growing up, we owned first an Atari 2600, then an Amstrad Cpc 464 tape drive computer, and finally a Commodore Amiga and a Snes.
Though there were several games on each machine which I was unable to play, due to graphical complexities or too much text, I found many games that I could play and enjoy extremely.
For me, playing computer games is more than a simple test of reaction speed or quick thinking, even with the most simplistic games on the Atari. I have always felt that playing a game is tantamount to exploring another world with it's own rules and history.
Though I have always longed to play rpg or strategy games, my site has made this not possible, so I've had to content myself with 2D platform games and scrolling, or one on one 2D fighting games.
While I was growing up, such games were common and I had many favourites such as the Turrican series on the Amiga, Golden Axe and final fight, Super Metroid, Castlevania 4 and the two Mega man X games on the Snes.
However, with the release of the Sony playstation in 1995, I found the amount of games I could play rapidly reduced. Since games that involve full 3D motion are too complex for me, I found myself rapidly left behind. Though I could still play one on one fighting games, every other game type I'd enjoyed previously was now deemed out of date.
Though the release of the Gameboy Advanced (and more specifically the Gameboy player), has made a few more 2D games more recently available, the majority of games produced today are, for me, unplayable. Furthermore, some 2D games feature text interface so complex, that even with the help of scripts or walkthroughs downloaded from the internet and read using speech, they still cannot be played by me.
I have now obtained (and in many cases finished), all the 2D games it's possible for me to play for the Snes or Mega Drive consoles. My favourite game series such as Metroid, Mega Man and Castlevania have all evolved beyond the point where I can now play them.
Therefore when I discovered audio games last year, I thought it would be the perfect answer to my problem. No more text difficulties, and I could play 3D games as well as the next person. Furthermore, my long time ambition of playing Rpg's might finally be realized.
However, I'm very sad to say that with only a couple of exceptions, I find audio game development to be years, (in terms of complexity) behind main stream games. This is by no means due to slackness on the part of the developers, I've found the Audio game developing community to be an extremely dedicated and hard working group. It is simply the huge difference in resources, time and people, between the main stream industry and the audio games industry. I'd love to see major companies like Capcom, Square or Nintendo doing something to help Audio game development. the audio Quake project proves that at least some forms of games, are adaptable to audio format, and since most games these days use huge amounts of voice acting to tell their stories, I see no reason why a company shouldn't take the time to make the few modifications it would take to create an audio game.
Most of all, I'd love to see an Audio rpg, even if it was only as simple as the first Rpg's produced on the Nes. the rpg market has grown absolutely huge, leading to massive online realms with hundreds of quests to explore such as World of warcraft or Ultima online, all of this totally inaccessible to visually impaired gamers. Though there are many text only rpg's on the internet, I have found the majority to involve a minimal amount of story and exploration, and to revolve only around raising a character's stats in order to kill other players. for this reason, I think an Audio rpg should definitely be the next step in Audio game development.
Given my love of exploration, I'd also love to see some more games along the lines of Shades of doom, and since I've never been able to play any strategy game, any audio versions of this would be welcome to me.
In general, I'd say that audio games need to evolve, and one way of doing this may be with help from main stream companies.
Luke Hewitt (23), United Kingdom
The target user group is the legally blind, without auditory, speech, mobility or cognitive difficulties. I believe narrowing the focus is important to make the project feasible. Audio games are often difficult to learn, so perhaps sighted individuals can help us come up with an intuitive system, though I hope we find willing blind gamers who can help us plan the system and avoid interface mistakes made by previous audio games.
The earlier quote by Luke Hewitt refers to the small set of audio games available. These are often created by academic or very small independent groups to cater to the blind community. The field is largely undeveloped and lacking awareness. So much hardware and software is available to blind persons to use computers, and games have so far incorporated little of this technology.
In terms of hardware, most desktops computers today have the sound capabilities to emulate a complex 3D world. Headphones often provide the best feedback, and a microphone may make a nice edition, though I believe a keyboard can provide the basis for most input. In a 3D world, a mouse could help provide fine control for turning and looking around.
For software, XNA along with the Microsoft Speech API would perhaps be easiest, though there are a number of solutions available.
Paper prototypes will not work for this type of system, but low-tech prototypes are possible. The "computer" can be a group of project members playing the part of speech and sound effects, or for a slightly more complex system, we might have a set of headphones and microphone with a project member graphically positioning 3D sounds on a computer.
The focus on this game must be its interface, so a simple combat-oriented game may be best. Games are based upon interaction and combat is the simplest meaningful interaction to emulate. I would like to construct a 3D game because it would provide an opportunity to create an immersive world, but any audio game will be challenge enough.
References
Hewitt, Luke. Compiled by Richard van Tol and Sander Huiberts. "What blind gamers want the video game industry to know.". game-accessibility.com p. 5-6. Retrieved September 6, 2008.
